Laptops in the Classroom: Two Students’ Perspectives on the Laptop Initiative
Contributed by Dishu Wu & Betsy Ballentine

Since DePauw’s laptop initiative began five semesters ago, it has opened up the availability of technology to the campus. Now, professors have many ways to integrate laptops into their teaching because of access to technology and technological support. Having to bring a laptop to campus, students are excited about the opportunities that technology could offer to their academic pursuits.

Some ideas we have on incorporating technology in the classroom include:

• Introducing outside information into classroom discussions through online research.
• Assigning a class scribe for the day can free students from note taking and allow for a distraction-free discussion.
• Bringing DyKnow into non-computer lab classrooms using laptops.
• Small group projects can benefit from having computer access to information as well as programs to present the information.

Observing the students who do bring laptops to class, it is clear that there is some off-task behavior that happens during class, such as e-mail, chat and browsing of the web. Most students are aware of how disruptive this can be and, sometimes, we just need a little guidance and reminding. We don't mind being told to close our laptops to focus on discussion, for example. It would also be helpful for professors to set guidelines and policies at the beginning of the semester so that students would not be confused about appropriate laptop usage. This would help to minimize off-task behaviors and maximize productivity by making the professor's expectations clear so students won't have to guess when it's ok or not ok to use laptops for note taking and topic research.

Dishu Wu (left) is currently a senior at DePauw and is majoring in economics with minors in mathematics and Asian studies. Betsy Ballentine (right) is a DePauw junior and is majoring in anthropology with a minor in French.

The laptop program has much potential with the technology on campus and technological support available to students and faculty. Both faculty members and students can benefit from the laptop program if laptops are further integrated into classroom activities. We encourage professors to continue to develop new ways of presenting information in order to facilitate the growing usage of technology to support student learning.

By far the most popular session at the FITS/W/S Faculty Workshop held on Saturday, September 16, 2006, was the one on laptops. Since by next fall, all students will own DePauw-contracted laptops (either Dell PCs or MACs), many issues related to the use of laptops are on people’s minds, ranging from classroom policies to tasks on laptops.

On October 25, in conjunction with the FDC, FITS will host a faculty workshop entitled "Laptops with Pens: Teaching and Learning with Tablet PCs and Related Devices." We have invited Dave Berque (Computer Science) to introduce and discuss tablets and how they are used by various disciplines currently. Most of us do a lot of work on laptops—writing papers, reports, meeting notes, and teaching materials on Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Dreamweaver, DyKnow, etc. How much easier would it be if we could also use a pen to mark things up, drag a table around, and save all that as part of the file?

We invited colleagues who have been using DyKnow on laptops, tablets, or pen-based computers to share their experiences with us. In addition, Terri Bonebright (Psychology) and Dave Berque will also discuss their HP funded research on the assessment of student learning with pen-based computers.

Please mark your calendar and plan to come and join us.

The National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) was established in September 2001, through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. A consortium of more than 100 liberal arts colleges from across the U.S., NITLE serves as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration for national liberal arts colleges as they seek to make effective use of technology for teaching, learning, and scholarship. It provides opportunities for teachers in liberal arts contexts to create transformative learning experiences for and with their students by deploying emerging technologies in innovative, effective, and sustainable ways.

DePauw is a participating college of NITLE (pronounced “knightly”), which offers us a variety of opportunities to engage with the many resources, workshops, symposia, and collaborations offered there.

Workshops and Symposia:

Over the past five years, a great many of DePauw faculty members have participated in workshops, symposia and collaborative projects presented by NITLE. These professional development and training activities offer a rich variety of topics, extending the opportunities for instructors beyond those that we can offer on a single campus and providing a venue in which participants can learn and share while in the company of colleagues from other schools.

A recent example is the conference, “Pedagogy and Digital Technologies:  Language Labs in the 21st Century,” held at Wabash College, September 29 – October 2. The event focused on considering the present and future impact of digital technologies on the teaching and learning of languages. Participants addressed questions such as “How might those who teach and support the teaching of languages make the most of new digital technologies? -- Which uses of these technologies retain or expand pedagogical possibilities? -- How do teachers and supporters prevent technology from defining effectiveness?” Four DePauw faculty members attended the conference, as well as three students who were part of a five-student panel responding to the ideas in several of the conference presentations.  They responded to questions about their experience in using gaming for educational purposes. Further, our faculty members had the opportunity to discuss with their counterparts from other institutions potential collaborations in the teaching of some languages with lower enrollments.

A sampling of upcoming NITLE workshops and symposia include:

• Exploring Collaboration in Classics, November 4 - 5, 2006 8:00 a.m., Rhodes College, Memphis, TN
• Language Faculty Program/Reception at ACTFL, November 17, 2006, ACTFL Annual Meeting & Exposition, Nashville, TN
• Multimedia Narrative, December 18 - 20, 2006, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY
• Copyright and Digital Materials, January 7 - 9, 2007, Honnold/Mudd Library (Claremont University Consortium), Claremont, CA

A complete list is at http://www.nitle.org/index.php/nitle/opportunities.

NITLE events at DePauw:

The NITLE consortium has enabled DePauw to have experts from other colleges come to campus to share their knowledge and expertise to our faculty and staff members. NITLE-sponsored events such as the workshop “Innovative Science Teaching: Enhancing Learning with Technology” for faculty members in the sciences and a Digital Images Symposium hosted at DePauw in summer 2003 are two examples of this. More recently, we hosted a NITLE workshop about digital video last June for faculty members to learn how to use Apple’s iMovie. We were able to invite faculty members from several colleges to present case studies of their uses of technologies in teaching in the sciences and the arts and to engage in discussion with participants from DePauw and other schools.

In May, Beth Wilkerson, FITS GIS Specialist (bwilkerson@depauw.edu), is organizing a NITLE workshop focusing on using Google Maps in teaching. Watch for an email soon from Beth for details about the dates and agenda for the workshop.

NITLE and professional development for FITS:

Finally, FITS instructional technologists have been able to participate in MITC workshops both as ‘students’ and as presenters or consultants. The time we spend in these ‘gigs’ working in cooperation with colleagues from other schools offers a rich context to learn new ways of  teaching with technology, share successes and learning moments, and form lasting professional relationships with those colleagues. We always return enthused and rejuvenated from these experiences. Further, the relationships we have developed through NITLE provide a community of peers with whom we can consult when new challenges arise here at DePauw and to whom we can offer our own expertise in exchange. Ultimately, these relationships enable all of the NITLE campuses to extend the scope of support that we can provide our faculty and student clients by linking our inter‑institutional expertise.

If you have questions about NITLE:

If you have questions or wish to participate in any of the NITLE offerings, contact DePauw’s NITLE Liaison:

It is truly an honor for me to serve as a Tenzer Family Professor in Intructional Technology at DePauw University alongside Dave Berque, Professor of Computer Science.

I’ve always entered through the backdoor of instructional technology. In fact, I first embraced computer-assisted learning at the suggestion of two of my students at the Univeristy of Kansas, where I held a teaching assistantship while finishing my Ph. D. in 19th- and 20th –century Peninsular literature. At the invitation of my two students, I joined them in authoring a multi-media CD-ROM program in Spanish. Although I later learned that one of the students had struck a deal with the chair of the Spanish department (to have the CD-ROM program satisfy his language requirement), it didn’t matter; I was hooked. The program we used to author the CD-ROM was called Director 5.0, and I confess I was but a mere actor on the set, at best, and the clapperboard guy at the very worst, which was most of the time. Nevertheless, by the end of the project, I knew at least enough to do some things unattended, without the need to bother my two student handerlers. I actually learned a great deal from these two students, so much so, that I suddenly became interesting to folks at Heinle and Heinle Publishing (a division of Thomson Learning). Heinle was looking for a naïve graduate student, such as myself, to help them author CD-ROM ancillaries for a number of their first-year Spanish textbooks. After a quick phone conversation, which featured me as a Director 5.0 namedropper, I embarked upon a digital journey that would ultimately produce 3 CD-ROM programs for foor Heinle and Thomson Learning.

Having proven my ability in the CD-ROM arena, Heinle offered me the opportunity to author a first-year textbook. Two years later, Plazas: Lugar de encuentro para la hispanidad hit the shelves. Four years after that, I joined a team of authors to produce a second-year textbook, Rumbos. Although my relationship with Heinle began with the computer and has ended up, for the most part, with paper, I, nevertheless, have continued to be active in evaluating Heinle language software.

At DePauw, my colleagues in Spanish have assisted me in several projects for Heinle, the most recent being the development of PowerPoint presentations to which students respond via infrared ‘clickers.’ Our objective in using a technology often featured in science courses and at large universities, is to provide feedback to the instructor as to the students’ level of preparedness before the day’s lesson is delivered. By having students respond to multiple choice questions specific to the topic of the class, we can quickly dtermine how to best pitch the material.

For those of us in Modern Languages, we are entering an era in which students will no longer go to a conventional language lab for language practice. Oddly, most of our students already own the technology we will most likely adapt to our own use: The Apple iPod. As developments in personal technology have outpaced instituional technology, we most likely will find ourselves managing collections of audio and visual material and providing options of connectivity and format, rather than serving as the wardens of the old language lab fortress.

As our technology becomes more portable, so does our ability to move with our technology and expertise into areas of our local community and abroad that have been historically underserved by technology and fall on the dark side of the digital divide of the have nots. Several years ago I helped establish a program at DePauw called the Community Technology Enhancement Program (CTEP). To date, we have provided apporoximately 500 refurbished computers, with licensed versions of Windows operating systems and productivity software, to local residents of Putnam county and occupants of rural Ecuador alike. At DePauw we have become experts in instructional technology and have developed award-wining progams and facilities, such as the 361 initiative, to train oursleves and our students. The time has come to take that expertise to the world, and I intend to be part of the process.